Posted by annam on Monday, May 29, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

During our time in Florence, we visited many of the famous sites and galleries throughout the city. We went to Palazzo Pitti, Boboli Gardens, Galleria dell’Accademia, the Galileo Museum, the Duomo, Belvedere fort, Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Vecchio. Each museum was overflowing with paintings, sculptures and other ancient artifacts. The David was stunning as was Botticelli’s Venus. So many of the paintings we saw had incredible colors and jewel tones, and they were incredibly well preserved. The Duomo and other churches were striking; I cannot begin to fathom how people so long were able to build such an intricate and large building. Everywhere I looked, there was history or art of some kind. It is difficult for me to wrap my mind around how old everything is, yet still so grand.

We like to think that we have advanced so much since the ancient times- and in some sense, we have. We have infrastructure and technology that no one could have ever imagined. But in the art realm, we rarely create much that is as impressive and majestic as the churches and palaces we have seen this month. We can give the excuse that art has taken a different turn, and I agree some modern art is beautiful. Simultaneously, I have been to the Museum of Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco, and I have seen a plain white canvas as well as a lone toilet passed off as art. I do not know if I consider that an advancement of art. We discussed the sack of Palermo and how mediocre looking buildings were constructed throughout the city. Granted, at home we never really started out with many old and grandiose buildings. Skyscrapers can be aesthetically pleasing, but that is not often the goal of the architecture. Perhaps our sights have changed and we have moved into being more utilitarian and simplistic; but in the process I think we have lost a lot of the grandeur society once possessed.